at
it costs to buy them. Such a test is a crude one, in art, however
infallible it may be in purely material commodities; indeed, is it not
the wise worldling in other fields who becomes aware in his general
bartering that it is unsafe to estimate his purchase exclusively by the
price tag?

To one who in this way makes the effort to inform himself with regard to
the things of the theater--plays, players and playwrights--concerning
dramatic history both as it appertains to the drama and the theater; and
concerning the intellectual as well as esthetical and human values of
the theater-going experience, it will soon become apparent that it
offers him cultural opportunity that is rich, wide and of ever deepening
enjoyment. And taking advantage of it, he will dignify one of the most
appealing pleasures of civilization by making it a part of his permanent
equipment for satisfactory living.

Other aspects of this thought may now be expounded, beginning with a
review of the play in its history; some knowledge of which is obviously
an element in the complete appreciation of a theater evening. For the
proper viewing of a given play one should have reviewed plays in
general, as they constitute the body of a worthy dramatic literature.

CHAPTER III

UP TO SHAKESPEARE

The recent vogue of plays like _The Servant in the House_, _The Passing
of the Third Floor Back_, _The Dawn of To-morrow_, and _Everywoman_
sends the mind back to the early history of English drama and is full of
instruction. Such drama is a reversion to type, it suggests the origin
of all drama in religion. It raises the interesting question whether the
blase modern theater world will not respond, even as did the primitive
audiences of the middle ages, to plays of spiritual appeal, even of
distinct didactic purpose. And the suggestion is strengthened when the
popularity is recalled of the morality play of _Everyman_ a few years
since, that being a revival of a typical mediaeval drama of the kind. It
almost looks as if we had failed to take into account the ready response
of modern men and women to the higher motives on the stage; have failed
to credit the substratum of seriousness in that chance collection of
human beings which constitutes a theater audience. After all, they are
very much like children, when under the influence of mob psychology;
sensitive, plastic to the lofty and noble as they are to the baser
suggestions that come to them across the